An estimated 8% of Americans, that’s 24.4 million people total, are currently diagnosed with a form of PTSD. PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder, haunts many people worldwide that have experienced a so-called “traumatic experience”, most oftenly had by former soldiers of the military. The raw source of a PTSD is very much unknown, which explains the fact that anything can cause someone with the disorder to randomly just “go off” at the bat of an eye. There’s a lot of randomness to this disorder, which leaves a lot of questions regarding what triggers it and how it can be healed. I personally believe that this disease should be taken much more seriously, as it’s something that too many Americans suffer from for it to be taken as loosely as it is. At the same time however, it should also be more precisely diagnosed. 

In the brief excerpt Leaving the Battlefield, Major Carlos C. Huerta is a former U.S. army soldier who currently is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD for short. Major Huerta served overseas in Iraq during the early 2000’s, fighting on the front lines to protect our country. For Huerta, it was very hard to accept the fact that he was suffering from PTSD. As he recalls it, one evening he came home and felt an overwhelming tightness in his chest. It hit him hard and it hit him quick. It left him struggling to breath and made him feel “closed in and panicky”. Huerta knew this was serious and considered checking himself into the emergency room, but instead took a true soldiers standpoint and decided to tough it out. When the same chest pain came the very next morning, he did however decide to go see a doctor. What Huerta was expecting to find out was that he had a heart attack, but what he didn’t expect to find out was that his heart was 100% in the clear. The doctor directed Huerta to see a CHMS, who after a visit diagnosed him with PTSD. He was distraught, believing that only the mentally ill suffered from PTSD. This of course wasn’t a true belief, but is still to this day a very popular one to the general public. Huerta’s PTSD was set off by a trigger that the doctor could never figure out, but considering the things he saw and did, (told children they’ve lost one of their parents, witnessed a very young Iraqi boy get blown to pieces by a landmine, watched some of his closest peers die, etc.) the trigger could’ve really been anything. To this day, Huerta is still taking medicine and seeing a therapist to try and heal his PTSD, but he has learned to live with it and is very determined to overcome it. 

Thankfully, I was assigned a project during my earlier years of high school where I had to read Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried. It is now and forever will be one of my favorite pieces that I’ve had the opportunity of reading. To start, the source that I have chosen applies to the book by digging deeper into the true horrors of PTSD, which O’Brien suffers from. O’Brien is permanently messed up from his experiences in the Vietnam War, which is a true tragedy. My source backs up the idea that PTSD is a true disease and should be taken just as seriously as any other illness. The people that suffer from this disease do not choose to suffer, rather they paid the price for fighting for our country, and for that we owe all soldiers much respect. The information in my source changed my understanding of the text by further backing up what a post traumatic stress disorder truly is. Going into reading this book I had an idea what PTSD was and that it did affect many ex and current soldiers, but I did not know in what way it worked. This account from an army ranger made me more sure of what goes on in a soldier's head, and how the things that they’ve seen during their service have affected their lives forever. Lastly, it’s important to know the historical context of any text that you may choose to read because knowing this information will help you understand any piece of reading that you may come across, no matter the genre. It also makes you further appreciate the piece of writing that you’re reading. The more the appreciation for the history of the context, the more you will want to read and understand what you’re actually reading, which is essential in all regards. 

In a January posting of The Havok Journal, an online web page that several authors write on, Scott Faith left a very interesting post on why he’s skeptical of PTSD claims, and why we should be too. For the record, Scott Faith is in fact a former member of the U.S. military, yet in his article he argues as to why PTSD is an overdiagnosed disorder and something that any ex-soldier can just cling on to when they’ve done something wrong. “PTSD has become a get out of jail free card, or at least a feel sorry for me and excuse my behavior card, a very powerful one with no expiration date.” Faith says. He later goes on to elaborate on this quote, pointing out that any ex-soldier that gets in trouble with the law will make a claim that they have PTSD and should for some reason be given a pass for his or her wrongs. Faith also throws out the alarming statistic that in at least 75% of criminal cases, and over 95% of felony cases, either the individual charged or one of the lawyers involved will explicitly or implicitly claim “the PTSD made me do it.” That statistic is mind boggling to me. Why someone that we as citizens once trusted and looked up to to fight for our country, is now making excuses to try and save themselves from something they obviously did wrong is beyond me. A final point that Scott made that really stood out to me was when he gave his own personal experience of his trip to the doctors office. Basically, he went to the doctor to try and find a cure for his sleep apnea. He states that the meeting was going fine until the doctor found out that he was a veteran, in which he instantly tried to put him on all sorts of medication for PTSD. Faith, knowing all too well that he didn’t have PTSD refused the medications and made it clear to the doctor that it was just sleep apnea that was haunting him, but that example solely proves how easy it is to be diagnosed with PTSD. The instant the doctor heard “veteran” he was ready to put a label on the case. A very wrong label at that.

Both of the accounts that I’ve chosen have very much helped me to further understand both the good and the bad realities behind post traumatic stress disorder. After reading both accounts I can very confidently say that PTSD should be taken much more seriously in the eyes of doctors and people everywhere. It is a real disease that haunts many people, but at the same time it is also a mis-diagnosed disease that many others don’t actually have yet are labelled by. I feel like to solve this problem, we must first dive into what really causes PTSD, and from there we can build around that to fully enlighten ourselves about such an important disorder.